Climb Aboard the Macabre Train, Little Ones...

This is a post I wrote last year, a few weeks before Halloween. It's worth revisiting, because Gorey is awesome. Seriously, The Gashlycrumb Tinies is a classic macabre tale.

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Now, class. I mean, Chalkheads. (cough) Today we are going to look at some fun Halloween favorites. First let me warn you. There will be no trick-or-treating, smiling, or laughable songs about witches stirring impaled fingernails in their brews. Furthermore, there will be no spiderwebby crosswords, jack-o-lantern word searches, or whisper-thin haunted noises streaming over the classroom speakers.

Today we are going to look at something--how should I say this (cough)--something different.

Edward St. John Gorey. (1925-2000)

If you've heard of him--Great! If you haven't, now you have. But have no fear, he's dead. So he's not going to disturb you too much. Well, let me take that back. He is disturbing, rather his work is such. But it's better now than later, say around Christmas. You wouldn't want to experience a Gorey Christmas or Gorey Easter or Gorey Fourth of July, would you? How about a Gorey Day-After-Chris Columbus-Day? After all, Chris Columbus didn't really discover America, yet he took credit, rather, we gave him credit for doing so. And he wasn't really nice to Native Peoples, was he? So Chris deserves a taste of macabre near his holiday. And today, he's getting it, right between the--

Okay, so it's settled. A Gorey Holiday, celebrated the Day-After-Chris Columbus-Day. Mark it on your calendar for next year... if you're still (cough) alive.

Introducing...

See the Tinies meet their fates here.

Now, if you'll excuse me while I go to the bathroom and heave and convulse while coughing up a lung.

THE END...

Literally.

Kindle-Carrying Waldo

Okay, Wife took this picture yesterday at approximately 6:30 am. I'm half awake and unwillingly smiling. This is me as the contemporary Waldo carrying a Kindle. No cane or walking stick, no backpack. Just a candy cane shirt that's too tight and an e-reader. Then today I find out that B&N has come out with a colorful new Nook at a really great price. Arg! You can never win with technology. Oh well. I'm happy with my black and white text. Who needs colorful images pelting your brain with unwanted stimuli? Not me. Just give me the words and the story.

It's true. Horizontal stripes would be unbecoming on Angelina Jolie. Okay, maybe not. 

Waldo or MT Anderson

So here I am, sitting at my desk a little before eight o'clock, waiting for the impending ostracization from my sixth grade students. Why? I'm dressed up like Waldo for Halloween. But, from a writer's perspective, I look strikingly similar to MT Anderson.

Trick -or- Write.

Join My Conga Line

I'm trying to decide what to be for Halloween at school on Friday. Besides the usual suspects (vampire, ghost, nerd, grim reaper, Frankenstein, prisoner) I haven't come up with much. Well, I've come up with a few, but I'm not sure I can pull them off while doing them justice:

• Sherlock Holmes (literary character, can't go wrong, need THE HAT and pipe)
• Greaser (have the switch comb and Chuck Taylors, but no jean jacket)
• Chef (have the hat and pants, but no smock; chefs are lame anyway, now anyone who watches Food Network thinks they can cook. wrong.)
• a book (can't do it, not going to hit my word count goal)
• Pseudonym (no one would get it)
• Junkyard Owner (what do I wear? overalls and a trucker hat? a bike chain around my neck?)
• JK Rowling (I don't have enough fake money to make spill out of my pockets; and wigs are itchy)
• The Situation (the last time I shaved lines in my eyebrows I was 14. Yes, I actually did it, and I'm not doing it again)
• Tiger Woods (I'd need a heram the length of a conga line; no appropriate link found)

Any other ideas out there?

Arm-Pit Stank Bullies

I just closed my work-in-progress to write a blog post. Sinful? Yes. Necessary? Maybe. Doubt it. Sherman Alexie said something like, and I'm paraphrasing, 'every word on your blog is one less word in your book.' Yes, that's true. And now I'm feeling guilty. So I'm going back to Bird Nerd and Eddie and his world of talking parrots and arm-pit stank bullies. Writing middle grade is just fun, isn't it?

Make sure to check out the National Book Awards short-list. Typically, I like the books they select. They're usually issue-laden and raw to the bone. I strive for that kind of raw emotion in my work, that sense of realness. I'm experiencing that right now while reading One Crazy Summer. It's good. I recommend it.  

Best Gift Ever

We're reading The Outsiders in class. It's antiquated by today's standards, but for some reason Ponyboy's story stands up to time. It's the whole outsider, not feeling like you belong, thing. Kids latch onto that stuff. Especially eleven and twelve year-olds who are new to middle school. Today, a student gave me a gift, as pictured to the left. Uh, best gift ever.

Short Fiction - Apparition

This is my NPR Three Minute Fiction Contest entry. It had to begin with "Some people swore that the house was haunted" and end with "Nothing was ever the same again after that."

Apparition

Some people swore that the house was haunted.  James knew this as he stood above the hatch to the fallout shelter.  The hatch was embedded in the garage floor.  It reminded him of the local theater's trap door he nearly fell through while playing the Ghost of Hamlet’s Father.  His acting days long gone, his life had taken an artistic turn.

Pictures.

James loved pictures.  Taking them.  Developing them.  Analyzing them.  The entire process captivated him.    

He bent down near the hatch.  He pressed a tiny key in the padlock and turned it.  Click.  The lock fell open.  He pocketed the lock and lifted the heavy, spring-loaded door.  The steel hinges shrieked, unveiling a stringy mess of cobwebs.  He had guessed right.  The door had been sealed for years.  Decades.  Maybe half a century.   

James cleared the webs with one hand.  The other steadied the camera that hung from a thick strap around his neck.  The blueprints suggested there were no lights in the stairwell, nor the hallway, nor the actual room itself.  But no one had been down there.  How could anyone know for sure?     

James stood atop the stairwell.  It was deep and black.  How could something be so dark in mid-afternoon?  He reached out for the first step, but his foot missed terribly.  He caught himself on the hatch’s handle, steadying his camera first and then saving himself.  The commotion echoed down the stairwell and floated through the dark hallway.  Then the sound simply disappeared.

James stood up as if someone else had seen him fall.  Silly, he thought.  He held the railing while inching down the first few steps.  It wasn’t so bad.  Just dark, not haunted like everyone said.  

Steel and concrete lined the stairwell.  James took the last couple steps carefully, and as he entered the hallway a crisp draft enveloped him.  At first, it was refreshing.  But with every step the temperature fell, and fell, until the hallway was no longer refreshing, but cold.

James settled into the darkness and felt for the camera lens.  He had left it exposed for quick shots.  He wasn’t sure what he had come to capture.  Whatever it was, he hoped to encapsulate the scene in one photograph.  One shot that says it all.  That was his goal during every shoot.

The lens was fine.

James took small steps down the hall.  With each one, the hallway grew colder.  He touched the concrete wall, using his hands as guides, and the wall led him to an opening.  A doorway with no door.  A large room.  One that felt empty.  

“Why not?” he said.  He raised the camera and shot the blackness from every angle.  The flash lit up the empty space.  Except the space wasn’t all that empty.  An old desk sat in the corner.  A lantern, covered in cobwebs, dangled from a steel beam.  A picture hung on the far wall.  But that was it.  Nothing more.  Nothing less.

James climbed the stairs and closed the hatch.

In his car, he scrolled through the digital photos.  The picture on the wall.  The lantern. He stopped at the desk.  The flash had shed just enough light to make out the desk's details.  The hand-crafted grooves on the side.  The squared feet holding up the legs.  But there was something else. A blurred impression of a boy sitting at the desk.

James fumbled the camera and turned it off.  Did he remember to lock the hatch?

He went to open the car door. 

A small fingernail scratched the window.

Nothing was ever the same again after that.

Things I Hear at School While Eavesdropping on Students' Conversations...

Kick off your weekend with a smile and chew on this:

"My dog is either gender confused or he's gay. Or maybe both. And he humps mailboxes."

Halloween is approaching quickly, so you should also take a look at some strange mailboxes.

Tiger Fish

So I got a Kindle for my birthday, thanks to Wife. I read faster on it. I don't know why, but I do. Maybe it's the Pavlov's dog theory of getting to push a button after finishing a page. Speaking of finishing.... just finished Story of a Girl, by Sara Zarr. It was quiet and brilliant on many levels. My kind of tale.  By the way, I've considered spending the rest of my life reading samples on the Kindle. They're free. Plus it'd make me a master writer... of chapter ones. After that, my storytelling would be up in the air. Perhaps I'll stick to complete works. 

WIP Status:  Plugging away on Bird Nerd. Over halfway there. Goal is to finish by Halloween. If I do it, I'll celebrate epically... by participating in NaNoWriMo in November. What am I thinking? I'm not. At all. But seriously, if I reach my goal I'm going to be a book for Halloween. Yes, a book! Spine and all. Don't know how I'll manage the pages, but I'll figure it out. Also, don't know what my goal is. The norm is 50,000 words in a month. But I'm leaning toward shorter, more like a novella. Think Tiger Rising meets Old Man and the Sea. Guess that equals Tiger Fish.

At least I have a title. 

Now I need 49,999 more words.